By Selwyn Duke
What is so often lost in the maelstrom of a campaign, with its sound-bite commentary, soporific sniping, gratuitous salvos of barbs and facile analyses, is depth. This is mildly evident in the comments that Vice President Cheney made recently about the danger a Kerry administration would pose to our country. It is starkly evident, though, in the reaction to them.
In a nutshell, Cheney said that the election of John Kerry could bring us back to the pre-9/11 mindset of treating terrorism like a crime and not an act of war, and that “If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again.”
This was seized upon by his political opponents and their crack public relations team and propaganda arm – the US media – and criticized roundly. John Edwards lead the charge by saying that Cheney’s comments were “un-American” and that his “scare tactics crossed the line.” Of course, it’s a sad fact of human nature that people are more tolerant of clever lies than of harshly spoken truths, and my only concern is whether or not Cheney spoke truth.
I most certainly believe he did speak truth, but not the whole truth. The truth is that the danger posed to us by the Kerrys of the world goes far beyond their perspective on the current war. In point of fact, the problem is one inherent in their philosophical underpinnings and infects every one of their thoughts, words and deeds.
What is the nature of the problem? It is that such people are held captive by the false god of political-correctness and those who proselytize in its name, otherwise known as left-wing special interest groups. Moreover, try as the Kerrys of the world may, they cannot distinguish between the inklings of that god’s unholy spirit and common-sense. Now, please read what follows very carefully, because I’m going to illustrate the real reason why the prospect of a Kerry presidency should give you pause for thought.
Most people don’t remember the name Hazel O’Leary, but she was the secretary of the Department of Energy [DOE] during the first term of one of the Kerrys of the world, Bill Clinton. She didn’t last long, however, and for good reason. She was a thoroughly corrupt individual who blended in seamlessly with a characteristically corrupt administration. She made a practice of awarding government contracts based on whether or not you were willing to play ball with the Clinton Administration. She would also try to punish those who strayed off Clinton’s plantation by threatening to kick them off the gravy train. But while this garden-variety corruption was bad, worse still was the corruption that extended beyond that of a flawed moral compass and into that of ideology.
You see, it also was revealed that O’Leary issued marching orders forbidding underlings to promote white males within the DOE. But while this kind of discrimination sat well with her, there was a kind that did not. O’Leary ordered that the color-coded identification system used to differentiate between employees at the DOE labs be eliminated.
But this system existed for a very good reason. It involved giving employees a colored neck-chain and ID tag that corresponded to the degree of security clearance they had. This enabled the DOE to prevent individuals with low security clearance from obtaining classified information. This didn’t matter to Hazel O’Leary, though, because she felt that the system was discriminatory. So, a situation developed at the national laboratories where it was almost impossible for the lab directors to know if employees were in the correct areas of the facilities.
To make matters worse, O’Leary put FBI background checks on hold in at least two of the national laboratories. Is it any wonder then, that it was revealed in 1995 that the Chinese had gained access to at least some information about two of our most sophisticated nuclear warheads, the W-87 and W-88? Is it any wonder that Wen Ho Lee, the scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and many others gained access to highly sensitive classified information when they shouldn’t have? You may or may not remember this almost ten-year-old scandal, but it was called “Chinagate.”
As it turned out, we’ll never really know how the Chinese obtained those nuclear secrets or whether or not Wen Ho Lee was complicit in the matter. And it’s virtually impossible to make any institution completely airtight – there have been breaches of security even quite recently. But what we do know is that there were a troubling number of such breaches at the nuclear weapons labs during that period. More importantly, however, here’s something else we can know: appointing the Hazel O’Learys of the world makes such breaches infinitely more likely.
Think about it: when she ordered that white males not be promoted, was her primary concern the task of getting the best people to fill those all-important positions? When she eliminated the color-coded ID system and FBI background checks, was her main concern the safeguarding of information that could be used to murder millions of Americans in a nuclear holocaust?
These are rhetorical questions to which we know the answers. O’Leary’s common-sense and sense of duty were trumped by her obsession with her brand of social-engineering. It reminds me of how the Nazis preferred to see Jewish scientists flee Germany or be killed rather than use them to further the war effort.
Now, yet another thing we can know is that the liberal O’Learys of the world are appointed by the liberal Kerrys of the world, and both species of the genus abound. And their degrading of institutions vital for the safety of America didn’t start with the DOE in 1993, not by a long shot. Back in the 1970's, some Kerrys of the world in the federal government determined that since certain groups didn’t perform as well on police exams, the exams must be discriminatory. Consequently, physical standards were lowered to pave the way for women to join police forces, and minorities weren’t required to score as highly on written tests. But such institutions were fertile ground for social-engineering because, you see, compromising them couldn’t cost all that many lives. It’s not like we’re talking about the military, after all.
Until Kerry of the world Clinton took office and it was the military.
There was the brou-ha-ha over “gays in the military.” They started allowing boot camp trainees to wear running shoes instead of combat boots because they found that women suffered an inordinate number of injuries when wearing the boots. Then they issued to recruits “stress cards” that could be produced when, for instance, a soldier felt that a drill sargeant was being too mean and a time-out was necessary.
Now, make no mistake about it, none of these inanities are merely aberrations unique to one politician or one administration. They are the fruits of a Kerry of the world mindset – one to which all imperatives, even national security, must be subordinated to their obsession with remaking society in their god’s image.
So, I don’t claim that John Kerry would be a modern-day Nero who would fiddle while our metaphorical Rome burned. No, despite their oft-expressed distaste for the military, liberals have shown that they’re willing to use it when it serves their ends. The problem is that try as they may, they just can’t help but be what they are. Oh, I know full well that the Kerrys of the world would say that they endeavor to get the best people for the job. Such proclamations are expected, and they may even believe them. But the Kerrys of the world imbue whatever they touch with their deity’s dogma of political-correctness. Expecting their judgement to not be colored by their curious little ingrained prejudice is a lot like expecting a Nazi’s judgement to not be colored by his. The Kerrys of the world are the initiated; they cannot be disabused of their notions; they cannot be reasoned with. All we can do is keep them out of power.
So there are some serious questions we should ask ourselves before pulling the lever in November. Do I want Kerry of the world Janet Reno, or John Ashcroft? Do I want Kerry of the world Madeleine Albright, or Colin Powell? Do I want Kerry of the world Hazel O'Leary, or Spencer Abraham? Do I want officials appointed based on an affirmative-action mentality whose only concern is meeting quotas, or based on who can protect my sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and children best? This isn’t nuclear science: if we want fewer Hazel O'Learys we must have fewer John Kerrys. So take heed, when you elect John Kerry you won't just get him -- you'll get his whole world.
